Meridian Gravesight's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Meridian Gravesight's back teeth had been aching for six days straight. That was the count of the dead she couldn't place. Six spirits, drifting through Copsefire's lanes, and no ground consecrated wide enough to hold them all. She pressed her jaw with the heel of her hand and kept walking toward the only building tall enough on the ridge: the old church with the cracked bell tower and the broken doors. She had buried the wrong girl once. A twelve-year-old, in the wrong plot, walking three more years because Meridian trusted the ache too fast. She would not do that again. But every week now, another spirit surfaced — a drowned uncle, a burned mother, a stillborn twin — and the small churchyards were full. She needed one ground. One field. A necropolis. A place large enough that no spirit would ever wander Copsefire again. The abandoned church was the answer. She had checked the deeds. She had checked the earth. Her teeth sang when she crossed the threshold, sharp and clean, the way they sang when a site was right. Someone was already inside. A red-haired woman sat on the altar step tuning a guitar with a bone key. Beside her, a smaller figure in a patched jacket ran a thumb along the strings of a second guitar, testing the sound against the stone. "You're the grave woman," the red-haired one said. She did not look up. "Teeth hurt yet?" "Who are you." "Luna Meridian. This is Jade. We sleep here when it rains." She struck a chord. Dust fell from the rafters. "You want to bury people in our roof." "I want to consecrate the floor. And the yard. And the field behind it." Jade looked up. Her eyes were the color of a bruise. "How many?" "Every restless one. Hundreds, before I'm done." Luna set the guitar flat across her knees. "Priest is dead. Bishop won't come. You need consecration, you need a voice loud enough to reach the ground." Meridian's molars pulsed. She understood what Luna was offering before Luna said it. "Sound consecrates," Luna said. "If you mean it. My voice means it." They played until the windows rattled. Meridian walked the nave, then the yard, then the field, counting the ache in her jaw as it spread and settled and finally went quiet. When Luna's last note broke off, the ground under Meridian's boots felt different. Held. She knelt and pressed her palm flat. The six spirits she had been carrying in her teeth were gone from her jaw. She could feel them settling into the dirt, one after another, like coins into a slot. Jade lowered the guitar. "It worked." "It worked for six," Meridian said. She stood. "Word will travel. By morning there will be forty." Luna grinned. "Then we play louder." Meridian looked at the broken doors. Something already stood in the frame — tall, crowned, watching. Not a spirit. Something that did not want the dead resting in ground so close to her hill.